


don't forget the nights

by Anonymous



Category: Vinland Saga (Manga)
Genre: Adultery, Age Regression Due To Trauma, Atli is more brocon than he is wifecon but it's keeping his family alive, Brother/Brother Incest, F/M, Fix-It, M/M, Non-Sexual Age Regression, Period Typical Attitudes, Sibling Incest, Vinland Saga Manga Spoilers, at different times from:, toruato demon possession continues apace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 08:20:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21443119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Two returns.
Relationships: Atli/Presumable Canon Wife (Vinland Saga), Torgrim/Atli (Vinland Saga)
Kudos: 3
Collections: Anonymous





	don't forget the nights

It's by foot that the Jomsvikings send him on his way, no horse or parting gift this time. The only courtesy extended is the rope cut from around his neck. He's still stumbling, unused to moving without cuffs on his ankles, when he sees his home again. The sight ought to quicken his pace, but instead he slows down. It seems a long way he's traveled, though he hardly remembers the time passing.

He's unshaven still, and the children won't recognize him. His wife might, but he doubts they've been together long enough. Perhaps his standards have been set too high in that regard.

But it's his brother who sees him, his brother who closes the distance with the long, purposeful strides Atli followed after all his life. It's Torgrim who knows him in an instant, and it's Torgrim who kisses him there in front of the house, shocking his whole body into one convulsive collapse into the arms that fit around him as perfectly as they always have.

"Brother," he says at last, struggling against the flare in his belly that defies his exhaustion and the length of his journey. "My family. I can't."

"I," Torgrim says, "am your fucking family."

His legs are so tired then that he lets his brother carry him inside and lay him down. If anyone did see them, no one's fool enough to let on they did.

His wife is the one to shave him and cut his hair, when she returns. She doesn't ask who it was bathed him, but quailed when it came to holding something sharp.

Atli gets the explanation from her later. How Torgrim grew quiet and sulky as the weeks went on, how she despaired of keeping him alive and even, she admits, grew hopeful of having one less mouth to feed. How he asked a few times after the mustache man, and grew sulkier still when she could give no answer. Until one day there was a man's presence in the kitchen with her, wanting to know where the hell he was, who she was and where his brother'd gotten to.

She doesn't recall when that was, but Atli suspects it was the day Thorfinn came calling for him and gave him his first shred of hope. They've always done everything together.

Torgrim seems to approve of his wife, more or less—she's certainly taken care of him well enough—but it must be said Atli is more than a little neglectful of his husbandly duties in the coming months, and his brother is no help in encouraging him to them. He has questions about the injuries he finds, especially the marks on Atli's throat, but Atli puts them off. There's no good can come of anyone learning the particulars.

His wife, for her part, accepts his absence and the injuries with an admirable womanly discretion. With her parents' assistance she the children had remained fed, and she scraped enough together to keep body and soul together for Torgrim as well. There'd been no one but Atli, after all, to tell the town his condition was anything but an honorable injury. So they weren't as badly off as Atli had feared. The children are so young they likely won't even remember any of it. He does see her mouth tighten when new marks of a different kind start to show up on his body, their provenance quite clear this time, but it seems she prefers not to know. 

There's guilt. Not enough of it.

There are bad days still, days when the snow is heavy on the ground and Torgrim's eyes are vacant again, days when Atli wakes to find him playing with the children and has to explain once again that his lungs and arms are too strong to imitate them in their games. But other days he has his brother again.

And on the good days, there are nights. He's ashamed of how much these mean to him, a respectable married man who'd vowed to care for his invalid brother now just as any family member would. His blood runs cold at the thought of his children someday repeating this with each other. But it's different for him and Torgrim. It's something no one else could ever understand, no one except the two of them. And his relief at having it back is enough to swallow up any fears or shame. This was everything for so many years. No four year interval could erase it from him.

Torgrim can't work for anyone but him, not consistently. The bad days are too unpredictable. Even on the good days, his hands tremble with any kind of sharp tool, and an axe is enough to turn a good day into a bad week. Atli doesn't ask where he goes on the bad days, if it's the same place he went for those four years they were apart. He's keeping his own secrets, after all.

He can tell his brother's pride is suffering, so they work together. He makes up Torgrim's undone work on the bad days, and eventually he does buy some sheep, just like he promised Thorfinn. He has to wait for the world to calm down before he goes back to the old ways, and it's probably impossible for his brother to join him there ever again. He won't have Torgrim shamed by having to do housework or care for the children. Atli's going to take care of his big brother, as Torgrim always took care of him. He loves him still on the bad days, even if in a different form.

And besides. For now, there are the nights.

**Author's Note:**

> Please imagine Atli's mustache doing the Ghibli hair thing as anija starts making out with him in public, that was my artistic vision
> 
> this rat bitch lying to thorfinn’s face about quitting banditry, going home to ntr his poor wife with his own brother, and neither of them even helping with the housework... cannot believe


End file.
